Susan Saegert

Professor of Human and Organizational Development

Ph.D., University of Michigan, 1974

Joined faculty in 2008

SHORT BIOGRAPHY

Susan Saegert is a professor of Human and Organizational Development and Director of the Center for Community Studies. Susan formerly was Director of the Center for Human Environments (CHE) and Professor of Environmental Psychology at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. She also was the founding director of the Center for the Study of Women in Society and of the CUNY Urban Health Collaborative.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Since 1990, Susan and her colleagues at CHE in the Housing Environments Research Group (HERG) have worked in partnership with community organizations and coalitions to understand how to improve distressed housing and neighborhoods in New York City. Susan's national work includes researcher for the team that provided the plan for the redevelopment of downtown Denver; a national survey of low- and moderate-income homebuyers for Neighborworks America; a national focus group study of low-income homeowners threatened with foreclosure; and a national survey of how community-building efforts develop civic capacity, conducted for the Aspen Institute Roundtable on Community Change. She also has studied women and the environment, crowding, urban stress and the role of housing in health.

Since joining the Peabody faculty Susan has been active on the steering committee of the Nashville Shared Equity Housing Initiative. She organized the Vanderbilt Affordable Housing Conference at Peabody College in March 2008, which bought together local government officials, non-profit developers and representatives of the financial sector with national experts and foundations interested in affordable housing.

After the conference a local group formed and applied to become a Ford Foundation and National Cooperative Bank Capital Impact Fund pilot city. Nashville was one of three cities chosen. Susan and graduate students Emily Thaden and Andrew Greer currently are at work on research related to this homeownership initiative.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

One of Susan Saegert's primary theoretical focuses has been the development and use of social capital in poor communities, as summarized in the first chapter of the book she edited with Phil Thompson and Mark Warren, Social capital in poor communities (Russell Sage, 2001) and in From abandonment to hope: community households in Harlem, with Jackie Leavitt (Columbia University Press, 1990). Her most recent books are The Community Development Reader with James DeFilippis (Routledge, 2007) and Urban Health: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Research and Practice with Nicholas Freudenberg and Susan Klitzman (Jossey Bass, 2009). Her most recent contribution to the study of women and environments is: Saegert, S. & Clark, H. (2006). "Opening Doors: Women and housing." A Right to Housing: Foundation of a New Social Agenda. Bratt, R., Hartman, C., & Stone, M. (Eds.), pp.340-359. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

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Selected Publications
CV | Media Mentions

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